{"id":1405,"date":"2009-07-15T07:56:46","date_gmt":"2009-07-15T15:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=1405"},"modified":"2009-07-15T10:17:42","modified_gmt":"2009-07-15T18:17:42","slug":"norway-3-balestrand-norway-dreamscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/15\/norway-3-balestrand-norway-dreamscape\/","title":{"rendered":"Norway 3. Balestrand, Norway. Dreamscape."},"content":{"rendered":"

[ The following is another installment from my travel journals, written during a recent trip to Norway.]<\/code><\/p>\n

June 26-27. 2009. <\/em><\/p>\n

This morning we took a boat from Fl\u00c3\u00a5m to Balestrand, a slightly larger resort spot. The boat left at 6 a.m., but, in a way, this didn\u2019t feel that early, as by then the sun had been up for hours and hours.<\/p>\n

Riding the boat up the Sognefjord, I was sitting in a plastic chair on the back deck, still sleepy, and I closed my eyes to rest. I became aware of all the air currents around me\u2014flapping my trouser legs, waving my several tufts of hair, buffeting my cheek, the whole atmosphere alive with currents and waves, the ocean of air all around me.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s about 9 a.m. We\u2019re on the front porch of Kviknes Hotel, a grand old place, all wood, with endless lobbies and parlors full of vintage furniture and Norwegian impressionist paintings. Wood floors and ceilings. No cruise boats here, the nearest highway is hidden in a tunnel under the mountain behind the town, it\u2019s utterly still.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The mountains across the fjord stand in layers, like a theater\u2019s curtains, framing the onward path. <\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n[Click the panoramic image of the view in photos and drawing at Balestrand to see a bigger version.]<\/em><\/p>\n

A panoramic view of this might be easier to paint than to photograph. I\u2019d love to have my paint kit here. Well, I\u2019ll make a sketch. David Hockney took his watercolor kit to Norway, I just remembered, and there\u2019s some nice fjord images in his book (and website), Hockney\u2019s Pictures<\/a> <\/em>.<\/p>\n

I can hardly believe we made it here. Living the dream. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the next day, 7:40 a.m., I\u2019m sitting on our balcony at Kviknes Hotel. As I mentioned, painters came here in the late 1800s, and a lot of their pictures are in the hotel lobbies. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one mountain in particular near the hotel which appears very often. A dumpling of a mountain, a pudding with a curly top. I\u2019m looking at it right now.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I bought a cheap bathing suit at the COOP supermarket and went swimming for a fairly long time off the steps in front of the hotel, the fjord is wide here, and much warmer than at Gudvangen. My bathing garb is one of those nasty tight little suits that you see on old men in Europe. It\u2019s always great to be in the living water. It tastes only slightly salty, due to all the streams flowing into what is, by rights, a 150 mile long estuary of the sea. Brackish.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For the last two nights we\u2019ve had these enormous hotel buffet dinners with, like, two dozen kinds of cured fish and dried meat as appetizers, not to mention the hot roasted or friend meats and fish\u2014and the formidable array of puddings. Everything is yummy, but it\u2019s binge eating\u2014you feel stunned when you\u2019re done. I guess this is how you eat on a cruise ship. Indeed, the Kviknes dining room feels like a ship, we sit by the window with the fjord twenty feet below.<\/p>\n

Very quiet in this town. Two or three seagulls circle nearby squawking, just as they\u2019ve squawked for thousands of years. Nice to think I\u2019m hearing the same sounds as the ancients. Nobody analyzes a seagull squawk, and I don\u2019t suppose the bird premeditates it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSquawk.\u201d\u009d The critic: \u201cBut what does this squawk mean?\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n


\n[This is how the Kviknes Hotel looks from the back…at midnight. It\u2019s never really dark at all.]<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s good being on vacation, away from my usual concerns about my writing career. My attention is either in the ongoing Now or in the What Next, that is, in the plans for our free-form itinerary\u2014boat to Fjaerland tomorrow, then bus to Hellesylt, boat to Geiranger and boat to \u00c3\u2026lesund.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re running out of days\u2014we\u2019ve spent ten nights in Scandinavia, with six more to come. Precious treasure, these slow days. Each vacation day dilates, filled with new sights and experiences. At home, a week can go by before I\u2019ve noticed. \u201cWhat? It\u2019s Sunday again?\u201d\u009d Or even a year: \u201cI can\u2019t believe it\u2019s time for Christmas.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My left hip is hurting a lot\u2014it\u2019s wise to walk slowly and sit down a lot and take elevators when I can. Last year a doctor said my hip joint is deteriorating and eventually I might have it replaced. Maybe next spring? I\u2019ll try taking the debatably efficacious glucosamine supplement pills first. In any case, the hip hurts somewhat all the time, and more if I walk all day. So I don\u2019t feel as able to go on long hikes or on scrambles up the mountains\u2014like I used to do. We rented a canoe yesterday, and I\u2019ve been biking.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But today we went for it and managed a three mile walk\u2014lovely to be up in those trees and meadows with the village and the fjord below.<\/p>\n

On the way back from our hike, Sylvia and I happened to be walking by the tiny Balestrand harbor just at the right time to see a new ship, Stril Challenger<\/em>, being christened\u2014funny that we use so liturgical a word in this context. Apparently the ship belongs to the Havyard company, an oil-drilling outfit, and is designed for emplacing anchors for the immense off-shore oil-rigs of Norway.<\/p>\n


\n[Mannequin in folk garb.]<\/em><\/p>\n

The high-school brass band played a few numbers, including the Norwegian national anthem and Happy Birthday<\/em>\u2014the musician kids all pale-skinned blondes and redheads. An official made a short speech, a woman in a Norwegian folk dress broke a bottle of champagne against the hull, and we joined a stream of locals filing up the gangplank to look around the huge Stril Challenger<\/em>. And then the ship took off for a little cruise across the fjord and back, although Sylvia and I had gotten off by then\u2014I was unsure about how long the cruise might be.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Later, after the passengers came back, we watched as the ship cavorted around the fjord, with smaller launches buzzing around it\u2014I think of the word, \u201clighter,\u201d\u009d used to mean a smaller boat that you use to unload a barge. I like that ships use smaller boats as extensions of themselves. Imagine still smaller shuttle pods emerging from the lighters. A fractal regress of ships.<\/p>\n

This set me to thinking about a starship launch ceremony. I imagined a great mothership ship with smaller ships circling it\u2014the lighters. And one of the lighters darts down to a boy\u2019s house, the lighter appears in the room of our young hero, Gunnar, to take him on a trip. As the lighter carries him off, Gunnar cries out for some precious object that he forgot\u2014and a lower-level lighter the size of a basketball goes back to his room to scoop up the pet soft plastic robot that Gunnar calls a \u201cshoon.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n


\n[Sunrise at 1 a.m.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Sitting by the fjord at the edge of the grand hotel\u2019s green lawn. I could stay here for months. It feels like the afterlife, like heaven. The air is slightly hazy, drenched in light. The flat water, the mountain ranges doubled as reflections. We\u2019re so lucky to be here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ The following is another installment from my travel journals, written during a recent trip to Norway.] June 26-27. 2009. This morning we took a boat from Fl\u00c3\u00a5m to Balestrand, a slightly larger resort spot. The boat left at 6 a.m., but, in a way, this didn\u2019t feel that early, as by then the sun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-scandinavia2009"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1405"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1414,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405\/revisions\/1414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}